Page 12 - DCAP602_NETWORK_OPERATING_SYSTEMS_I

Network Operating Systems-I

notes
figure 1.5: selecting a partitioning method

Automatic partitioning creates three partitions:
1. The/boot partition is the home of the kernel: the program at the very heart of Linux.
Fedora recommends a /boot partition of no less than 100MB, though you’ll seldom need
this much.

2. The swap partition is used as a fallback for memory when all of the system memory is in
use.
3. The/partition contains everything that isn’t on its own partition.
Partitions in Linux appear differently than those in Windows. Linux partitions don’t use the drive
letter designations, such as C:, which you may already be used to. The primary partition on Linux
is labeled / (you’ll see how this fits into the overall partitioning layout later). Other common
partitions on a system include /boot (contains the kernel and boot loader), /home (contains
user-specific files), and /var (contains program configuration and variable data). These labels
are called mount points. It’s possible to organize your system so that it’s spread over multiple
partitions; for example, it’s quite common to put /var (where data, including such things as
MySQL databases and Websites, live) on a separate partition. However, automatic partitioning
makes things simpler, and spreading your data across different partitions doesn’t achieve very
much. Some administrators strongly recommend it, but the Fedora rescue CD (also downloadable
as an ISO image from the Fedora Website) will help you avoid most problems that might have
been aided by splitting the data across different partitions in the past. Therefore, the default
partitioning setup is usually sufficient.

Task Give the three partitions of automatic partitioning.

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